Lamine diack promotional efforts from BEIJING 2015

Cali, July 17, 2015: Lamine diack promotional efforts from BEIJING 2015, With just over a month to go before the start of the IAAF World Championships in Beijing, IAAF President Lamine Diack has urged organisers to step up promotional efforts to ensure that the Bird’s Nest Stadium becomes, again, a motivating and inspiring stage for the world’s best athletes.

President Diack, currently in Cali for the IAAF World Youth Championships, is concerned that the advertising and promotional activities in Beijing are too low key.

“I myself visited Beijing for the ‘One Year to Go’ promotional ceremony in August 2014 and I was in Beijing again in March and again in April 2015 to support the promotional effort,” said President Diack. “On both occasions, I reiterated the need to invest properly in the promotional efforts to secure what had been promised to us by the Chinese authorities for this event – 100% capacity for the evening sessions and 30% for morning sessions,” said President Diack. “But at the moment, we see that some evening sessions are still around 50% of capacity, so we need to work very hard in the remaining weeks. We have no time to lose now.”

“Together with my IAAF Council colleagues, I supported Beijing’s bid for the 2015 World Championships because I believed that the event would not only be an extraordinary competition and would strengthen the image of our sport worldwide, but because I felt that it would allow China to unleash the huge potential of athletics in China. I call on all our partners in China to support us to achieve these goals.” —- IAAF